Vanuatu's Prime Minister is expected to ask Australia to help fund a multi-million-dollar internet cable project when he meets Malcolm Turnbull next week.

Concerns over China's rising influence in the Pacific remain front of mind for the Federal Government as it prepares to welcome Prime Minister Charlot Salwai for his first official visit to Australia this weekend.

In 2014, Vanuatu completed its first submarine internet cable, linking capital Port Vila to the international fibre optic network in Fiji, and construction has begun on a second cable that will link to the Solomon Islands.

Ahead of this weekend's visit, Vanuatu's Infrastructure Minister, Jotham Napat, confirmed his Government would also be asking for Australian assistance for the privately run project.

"There's a joint meeting that I will be accompanying the Prime Minister and he's definitely going to raise this with his counterpart," Mr Napat told the Pacific Beat program.

"The support that the Australian Government is providing to the Solomon Government, they have to do the same for Vanuatu."

While Australia's move to block Huawei from the Solomon Islands project was made on regional-engagement and security grounds, it has also had knock-on effects for commercial fibre-optic network builders in the Pacific.

The Interchange Group, a Vanuatu-based consortium that is rolling out the Pacific nation's internet cables, believes Australia's intervention in the Solomon Islands has hurt its privately funded project.

Interchange chief executive Simon Fletcher tweeted it was "very hard to compete with a free cable".

Mr Napat declined to speculate whether Vanuatu would receive a more sympathetic hearing from Australia if it too had begun negotiations with a Chinese company.

"Basically we want infrastructure, it is the infrastructure we are after and it's not politics, it's outside of politics," he said.

"We know what an underwater cable will bring to a country like the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu in terms of the economy, [and] it will improve the communications."